


where a man with regrets lived all alone

by queenmcgonagall



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:04:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmcgonagall/pseuds/queenmcgonagall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn looks at Liam and Liam looks back, but Zayn looks with love and Liam looks with friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where a man with regrets lived all alone

It’s just that Liam’s eyes spell out love and Zayn can see behind it and he knows it’s just brotherly love. And Liam puts his arm around him and plays with the bottom of his tshirt and Zayn sees through that too. 

It’s all a game to Liam, but he doesn’t even fucking realize what he’s doing to Zayn and all Zayn wants to do is shake Liam and be mad at him but he can’t because he can’t fucking look at Liam without wanting to smile and maybe giggle a little bit, which is stupid because Zayn isn’t some fucking 12 year old.

And sometimes, when Zayn is drunk, alcohol swishing through his veins in a helpless attempt to forget, he imagines telling Liam and he imagines Liam’s sweet mouth dropping open because he’d always thought Zayn didn’t love him and he never thought it was going to work and they ride off in a fucking sunset. And then Zayn sobers up and remembers Liam loves someone else, someone who’s not Zayn.

And every time it happens, every time Liam looks at him like a puppy or tells him he loves him, Zayn chokes up and the words sit on the tip of his tongue and every time that he turns away with those words still balancing delicately on the tip of his tongue and not actually existing in the real world, he hates himself. And that hate grows stronger every day that Zayn wakes up and Liam isn’t next to him. He wants to hate Liam but he can’t and he ends up hating himself, hating his stupid cowardice, his pretence that everything is all ok. Sometimes he hates Louis and Harry because he sees Louis’s fingers brushing Harry’s hipbones under his tshirt and he wants that to be him, wants to feel Liam’s fingers on him all the time, wants Liam to mark him up and make him his, even though Zayn knows it will never happen.

If he were any sort of brave person, Zayn would just sit Liam down and tell him.

But he’s not. He cowers behind tall hair and smoky eyes and a mysterious persona and nice clothes. He hides behind faceless girls in hotel rooms and maybe one or two faceless boys, and behind clear bottles of vodka in the hotel minibar. If he gets drunk enough, he can forget.

Maybe one day, he will tell him. Maybe one day, when Liam and Danielle are fucking married or something. Zayn will be the man who drinks before noon and he’ll be the one showing up on Liam’s front steps at 3 in the morning, pounding on the door, drunk off his face but words spilling out of his mouth, words he’s been meaning to say for 20 years. He’s gonna be the one who, 20 years later, still wants Liam’s fingers and he’s going to say so and Liam is going to look at him pityingly and clap him on the shoulder and tell him to go home and sleep it off.

And Zayn will sit on their front step, light a fag and smoke until he thinks he might suffocate. And then he’ll go to Louis and Harry’s and sleep on their couch while they murmur sympathetically in the kitchen and he’ll leave before he has to watch them make eyes at each other over the breakfast table, because maybe that too still hurts after 20 years.

But for now, all he has is unsaid words and cowardice. For now, all he has is being able to cuddle Liam and pretend like he’s his for a few minutes. 

And for now, that’s enough.

But Zayn isn’t dumb. 

He knows that one day, it won’t be enough.

And he doesn’t know what he’s going to do when that day comes.

**Author's Note:**

> title from Ed Sheeran song Way Home.


End file.
